The Infinity Platform
by David Scholes
Summary: Someone or something has either interfered with the Infinity Platform or the time stream or both. The Silver Surfer intends to find out!    Then one
1. Chapter 1

The Infinity Platform

The very distant future 

The sleek, yet powerful, silver form of the cosmic enforcer, sliced through the timeless, endless, ethereal sea that lay beyond the Multiverse. Using his own unparalleled sensory perception he searched for his objective with increasing concern.

Even before his empowerment the Silver Surfer, it was said, could see fully one light year ahead. Since the time of that empowerment the noble one's already vast sensory capabilities had been still further enhanced. In sensory capabilities he had become a, much greater, cosmic version of the long dead Asgardian god once known as Heimdall.

The Infinity Platform has no space/time/dimension/reality coordinates. Its location is determined only by a tenuous link to the All Place - where all the different realities converge.

From atop the Platform it is possible to view both the past and the future. All of it, for all of the realities. To step off one edge of the platform is to be present at the very beginning of time. To step off the opposite edge is to be present at the other extreme, at Time's End. More, it is said, any entity atop the platform has only to wish it and they can be transported anywhere within the space/time/dimension/reality continuum.

Only a privileged few have ever stood upon the platform. Which is as it should be. The cosmic enforcer known as the Silver Surfer is one such. Again this is as it should be.

Yet now the Infinity Platform was gone beyond detection.

"If he cannot locate it," bespoke Eternity "then no one can." Uuaatu the Watcher simply nodded.

None of the great powers still in existence knew for certain the origins of the Infinity Platform. Though it was generally assumed to have been created by that which is above us all when that entity took his leave of us. A legacy which could be used by those with some responsibility for the Multiverse. To ensure no force had sought to interfere in the time stream in any of the realities.

Eternity and Uuaatu looked to the nearby multi-dimensional black hole, said to exist in all dimensions, which the Silver Surfer had entered. It was the only known means of entering the ethereal sea that lay beyond the Multiverse and the only place the Infinity Platform could possibly be.

Uuaatu cast his mind back many millennia ago to when the Silver Surfer had been elevated to great power status. An inevitable outcome that had, as far as the race of Watchers were concerned, been long. long overdue. The Universe, nay the Multiverse needed the Silver Surfer and more they needed him at his present power level.

Uuaatu came out of his reverie to behold the awesome sight of the Silver Surfer emerging triumphant from the massive gravitational well of the multi-dimensional black hole. In tow behind him, held in the Surfer's quasi tractor beam was the Infinity Platform itself.

Eternity and the Silver Surfer stood together upon the great platform now returned to its rightful place. Eternity looking to the past and the Silver Surfer to the future. Neither recognized what they saw. Either massive changes had been made in the time stream itself or the Infinity Platform itself had been, not so subtly, altered. Or perhaps both. Uuaatu the Watcher neither truly on the platform nor off it looked on more than uneasily.

"Where is he?" enquired Eternity softly "where is Time's Guardian, at such a moment?"

The surfer did not reply. At least not immediately. "We have only one option mighty Eternity," came his eventual response.

As Uuaatu looked on Eternity stepped off one edge of the Infinity Platform to arrive at the dawn of time while the Surfer stepped of the opposite edge to arrive at the very end of time. Or so he thought.

Instead the Surfer found himself in total nothingness and absolute blackness. The Infinity Platform had transported the Surfer beyond Time's End.

For all of his great and vast power the Silver Surfer found himself like unto a bright candle in a perfect vacuum. This was a place where

The Silver Surfer attempted to use his own inter-temporal powers to return to the Infinity Platform or indeed

Just as he lapsed into unconsciousness the noble one, the one time herald of the great Galactus, wondered how mighty Eternity had fared at the other end of time.

To be continued

Garth 


	2. Chapter 2

The Surfer came to consciousness. His first thoughts were for great Eternity. Had he who was the embodiment of the Universe met with a similar fate? Jumping off from the Infinity Platform to end up in whatever existed before time began?

The Surfer seemed just barely aware of his surroundings. Wherever he was, the noble one was not in total darkness. A few mystical fires burned on a small planetoid just ahead of him.

Though apart from the planetoid, the Surfer detected no stars or other celestial bodies. More the Surfer sensed no strength in the mystical fires and that they would soon die. 

Realization dawned on the cosmic enforcer as he came to full consciousness. He had managed to make the jump back into time. But just barely. He was present a few moments before Time's End. It was in some ways a more truly desolate, more dismal place than the nothingness that is all that exists after the End Time.

In the darkness beyond the other side of the planetoid, the last surviving celestial body, the Silver Surfer saw the Dark Fate once again facing down Time's Guardian. As they had faced each other once before.

It was now a matter of historical record that the Multiverse had survived that first battle at what might have been Time's End. That the then defeated Time's Guardian had with one last throw of the dice called forth a champion, a proud warrior god, to take his place. To become de facto Time's Guardian. That champion becoming as one with the greatest time storm ever created (greater even than anything in the Time Wars) had held sway even against the Dark Fate. Stopping and reversing the seemingly inevitable plunge into End Time.

Yet the Surfer knew that this was different. That Fate was stronger now and that he who was Time's Guardian weaker than they had been in the first battle of the End Time.

The Dark Fate looked across at the Silver Surfer with just a hint of surprise and concern, yet, locked in a death embrace with Time's Guardian, his attention was elsewhere.

"Do it Surfer," called out an exhausted Time's Guardian, "do it now."

Instinctively the Silver Surfer knew. The power the sheer force of the energy surge would have made even the great Galactus proud as the torrential waves of the power cosmic pushed Times Guardian and the Dark Fate over into the End Time and beyond. Still locked in their death embrace.

Before the combatants passed over the end time horizon, a surge of godly energies came back to the Surfer. He felt the synergistic effect as those energies combined with his own power cosmic. A feeling he hadn't experienced since long, long ago when he and Odin the Almighty had joined together to assist Beta Ray Bill. Though this feeling was far greater still and the transfer was permanent.

With the Dark Fate gone and no longer fuelling the Multiverse's inexorable march into the End Time, the Silver Surfer summoned his own time storm. It was a relatively simple matter now, for the Silver Surfer, no stranger to time storms himself, to stop and reverse the march into End Time. Even mightier, as he now was, the Silver Surfer still sensed something assisting his time storm.

When it was all over the Surfer paused for a moment. Wondering how he managed to come back from beyond time. Whether he had done it himself, or the Infinity Platform had overcome the Dark Fate's mystical programming of it, or Time's Guardian had brought him forth. Most likely a combination of all three.

"The mighty Thor is gone," the Surfer heard himself say sadly "and mighty mjolnir with him, Time's Guardian is no more."

"The once Lord of Asgard's sacrifice was not in vain Surfer," came the friendly voice of Eternity, "see the stars, even now, returning to the heavens."

The Surfer was pleased and comforted to see his old friend. He had just lost one old friend but it was as if he had regained another. He realized that to one such as Eternity – even the Infinity Platform transporting him to before the beginning of time was only a minor inconvenience. He knew, also, that it was great Eternity himself who had helped him with the time storm making it even greater.

"Do you not know it Surfer?" said Eternity not unkindly but solemnly and with a subtle indication of respect. "There has been a changing of the guard, you are it now, you are Time's Guardian." 

The Surfer knew it was so.

"Come great Eternity," said the Silver Surfer "we have some adjustments to make to the Infinity Platform."

End


End file.
